It's a sad, sad life.
  
Going through days without worry,
                                       without fear,  
                                            of being judged by someone in the sky you've never met.

It's heartbreaking and pathetic.

Following morals that feel right,
                                       felt in your heart,
                                           instead going by ancient word in a "holy" book.

I am stupid, I am ignorant.

I believe differently than you, and I shall be outcast,
                                                      condemened to eternal hell,
                                                         because you disagree with me.

Is this what your "God" really wants?

Blue rings of smoke and
Stop.
Ending further
Stop.
Mechanical drones but
Stop.
Thought process abruptly
Stop.
Nothing has
Stop.
For my
Stop.
. . .
You may now begin.
The millions of
personal malfuctions
scrape and sing with a  
hideous tune, but none
could be better to
soothe filthy thoughts.
They begin as tiny
blue rings of smoke and
are soon ****** in through
unsightly painted vents.
A waft of sickly sweet
confusion crosses the
outer borderline,
ending further along
private hallways.
An unnoticable
tinker of raspy tools
buzz with
mechanical drones, but
it becomes easier
with children's time
and deaf ears.
It satisfies every
thought process, abruptly
ending in tasteful rainbows
and inspirational copper print.  
Nothing has
to make sense here,
and only I would know better.
This was strictly
for my
own entertainment.
*End.

Barnacles crunch like fast food under your sneakers,
my gnawed-on boots.

We pass over cat-eyed shards of glass
still spicy with beer bubbles
and still fizzy with teen rebellion;

It molds like an infection here.
In a town nicknamed "Little Norway." ~

This place hoards candy-colored suburbia in its pockets.

Houses like skittles weigh down its pants
and it belches out tourist traps weaker than expired pepsi,

yet it still manages these moments
where I can trot by your gazelle legs
and blast Julie Andrew's confidence.

And I want to heap myself on the oyster shells, say
STOP
Put this moment in a snowglobe,
sigh into it before we move on,
do anything before the wind whips it away.

Etch it into your hand if you have to.

But breeze dimples the water like a golf ball
and rips at the seams of the shore.



Please don't forget me when you leave.

Kindergarten

I don't know if I believe in God,
but I believe in heaven and angels
and the power of the vet,
so I mutter to them
in a sticky panic
when the rubber tire of the
UPS truck
catches your tail,

your midsection,

and irons your round belly
into the sidewalk.

I think this is the day I stop being a dog person.

1

          i must have missed something

all the neighbors have left
     their yard light on overnight
filling our woods with the
     insidious dull blue glow of
              mercury vapor lights

2

i stand in the yard among
          the sleepers but not of them

apart, distinct, set aside by
   my own inability to sleep
and now they have taken
         from me this too the night's sky
         
     has no stars

3

     the sun has sent us messages

across the reach, a reminder,
         a storm, a simple burst of
        
radiation, which spills across
the magnetic skin of our
   home, to light the sky with

ethereal glow, but hidden
         from me by these neighbors

with their mercury vapor

4
               fear of night

Christina plays
the glass-bead
   game,
while sitting
in her room.
I love Christina
with her golden
   hair
and Florentine
   balloon.